New Horizons
Today is the first day of school for me, and going back this fall is hard, even harder than returning after maternity leave back in February. Part of it is that the relationship with my son is deepening. He is approaching my favorite age, that magic space between one and two, and his little personality is taking shape to such delightful effect. Part of it is I have gotten used to a midday nap, said nap taking the edge off of the months of accumulated sleep debt associated with a new baby. Finally, part of it is I am losing enthusiasm.
No, I’m not losing enthusiasm for teaching. Each semester, the students enrich my life immeasurably, just as I try to enrich theirs. I never feel more calm and confident than when I am in the classroom. It’s not my subject, either. English will always have my heart. What it is is course redundancy. This will be the twelfth time in three years I have taught this particular composition class, and the course content is beginning to feel stale. Had I had time over the summer, I’d have selected new readings and given my syllabus an injection of newness. Alas, I will have to trudge through and just hope for a different schedule in the spring.
Lesson learned: take the time to revamp when you’re feeling stagnant.
August Poetry Slam: Prompts
We’re wrapping up our summer break with a break from poetry and looking forward to our next Super Challenge as Rowan breaks down what a prompt is and how to use it from the other side of the judging table. Looking for ideas? She’ll even throw in some prompts at the end to stretch your brain. We’ve got your Slam right here.
Prompt Up!
Prompt up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we announce a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post. It’s your job to use that prompt in your story or poem in some way. Feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it somewhere else, change it, or float it down to other territories.
This week’s prompt up comes to us from Rowan’s winning post from last week, Cabinets. Your prompt, should you choose to accept it, is: We counted six.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
1. In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the fiction|poetry badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
2. Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
3. Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
4. Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
5. Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
An English Professor living in Southern California, Natalie enjoys too many hobbies to be a practical person. When her children give her a minute, she writes essays, fiction and poetry on her personal blog, The Cat Lady Sings. Natalie is a Contributing Editor here at YeahWrite.
